Poor Neutral/Earth Bond - Stubborn Nuisance Trips

[Ewaldvdh]

Day night switches and motion detectors all small electronic devices use x- rated capacitor supply or dropper power supply where the low voltage is not mains isolated faulty day/ night or motion detection could also be problematic for RCD's.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8493[/ATTACH] is

Thank you again; that is also valuable input Haven't considered that. I do have a Sonoff smart switch on the my Garage DSUB [outside light] and 2 on my Pool DSUB [Pool Timer and Light]; assuming the same premise could be valid for these. I did get rid of the day/night switches; [removed the Day/Nights because they were reducing the lifetime of my energy savers and replaced those with smart timers {at dusk they couldn't make up their mind as to whether or not they should be on/off}; {never fitted security lights, read too many Andy McNab books for that } House internals does have some Sonof switches as well but the lights are wired outside earth leakage

[Justloadit]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8493[/ATTACH] is

Just a point to note. The "Gnd" symbol in electronics, does not necessarily mean that it is a earth Connection.
It means a common point for all the electronics of the respective schematic which are tied together.

In the circuit shown above, joining the electronics to earth would destroy the bridge rectifyer.

[Alfred M]

Just a point to note. The "Gnd" symbol in electronics, does not necessarily mean that it is a earth Connection.
It means a common point for all the electronics of the respective schematic which are tied together.

In the circuit shown above, joining the electronics to earth would destroy the bridge rectifyer.

Yes i agree need to remove that symbol these circuits are all double insullated i have repaired quite a few of these supplies extreme care should be taken on these dropper supplies as the low voltage side is not mains insulated the series resistor on the neutral side is for current limiting that normally go open curcuit and some mov's either burn black and open curcuit but the x rated capacitor on the live side normally survives. These supplies work but with all the spikes we experience during load shedding i replace quite a lot of day/night switches and motion detection lights. These supplies can only work on low current devices but not the most reliable.

[Ewaldvdh]

That prepaid meter only working on earth and not on neutral is a bit telling.

Make sure that all neutrals are wired to the correct neutral bar (the one related to where the live is coming from).
While a crossed neutral on a live coming on the load side of an RCB will trip instantly, we recently had an instance of a neutral connected to the municipal supply neutral bar while the live was fed from the inverter (light circuit so it wasn't on earth leakage). When the municipal supply dropped, no problems were experienced. But when the municipal supply came back on, the RCB tripped as the inverter crossed to bypass mode (despite this neutral problem being on the load side of the RCB). Moving the neutral to the neutral bar for the inverter for circuits not on earth leakage solved the problem.

Good Morning Dave. Apologies for the delayed response.
Thank you as well

I went with solar because of the continuous and near everlasting supply issues from my municipality feed.

The Live/Earth on the meter was an issue well before I went the solar route; in fact it has been an issue since the municipality gave my neighbors their second phase that they magically manifested out of thin air with no meters.
The trips existed way before I went the inverter route. Will check again though that there isn't a crossing over a you describe in your thread to to make sure I exclude that.

[Ewaldvdh]

Not sure why the earlier post today did not go through; although it might have been due to a slightly frustrated tone; not sure if the moderators picks up on that. I will try to be a little more moderated.

As of yesterday AM I haven't been able to have my municipal feed switched on.
Did test suggested isolated inverter e.g. running on Eskom only > still tripping
Did my normal test isolating municipal feed e.g. running on inverter only > no trips
measured 0.8 amp on municipal line between Neutral and Earth when isolated e.g. not connected to my internals > not sure if this is a valid test but there you go
measured 18V on municipal line between Neutral and Earth when isolate e.g. not connected to my internals
Eskom Voltage on Live/Neutral jumping between 140V and 270V

[Ewaldvdh]

+ Showing 0.8A [measured between earth and neutral; same as with voltage measured [mains switched off at this stage] . All measurements confirmed with multimeter also with inverter switched off completely

[Alfred M]

If you have 140v-270v at your point of supply from the council log a fault on the Ekuruleni app so that a council electrician can identify the abnormal voltage range you should have a constant 230v ac at point of supply

[Ewaldvdh]

Good Morning

Done and did contact council. The context to this thread is that I am getting Nuisance trips which, in my opinion is as a result of bad components in my source feed. Shared the escalation that I have been experiencing since Sunday morning as; to my mind; it is a culmination of a longstanding problem I have had; leading to posting on the thread to ask about legalities of doing a earth/neutral bond outside my property for three reasons -

- Despite the fact that the consensus of trained electricians are that it is impossible that earth leakage trips are caused by the source feed; I have research done and experiences proving otherwise [read - trips existed before installing inverter; if I switch off Eskom feed = no trips; if I bypass inverter = trips]
- I have an escalation open going all the way up to the mayors office which has not been able to mobilize Ekhurleni to a degree that they are willing to actually come out and do what is needed to be done to fix their mess
- I have done everything in my power I believe to diagnose and fix stuff on my side short of rewiring the house [barring taking the DSUBS off the earth leakage and splitting it into their own; however please note - running on inverter only = no trips; running on eskom only = trips]

To update this forum for context; put this out on my street's whatsapp group yesterday - found that :
- 1 household is reporting burnt smell; loss of small appliances
- 1 household reporting plug points catching fire and loss of large appliances
- 1 household reporting loss of their second phase [which I think is the one jumpered onto the phase [read cut into the wiring supplying my house]
- 1 household reporting power on and off [the household that was worked on the weekend my cycle of trips went from many a day and permanently in the rain to one or two a day and sometimes none]
[the 4 above + myself = 5 out of the 8 houses supplied from the same distribution box on the street corner]
- Around 22h00 last night the neighborhood next door went dark; around 01h00 my neighborhood went dark

One question though please -- outside of the voltage thing that prompted your reply; would you agree the 0.08 Amp measured across my neutral/earth [municipal side] ramping down to 0.00 and then ramping up to 0.02; 0.04; 0.06; 0.08 and then cycling again be considered sufficient evidence that there is in fact an imbalance on the load supply side generating sufficient noise on my line to trip my earth leakage?

[Alfred M]

It sounds like a floating neutral on the point of supply causing over and under voltage on the points of supply. If unbalanced supply enters your db with load connected at point of consumtion the rcd will trip as the load would be unbalanced between L-N. Floating neutral could cause the symptoms you explained in your area over and under voltage. You should not bond neutral to earth it should only be bonded at the star point of the supply transformer.

[Alfred M]

This article explains single phase distribution derived from 3 ph star point and the effects of floating neutral
https://electrical-engineering-porta...ground%20Point.

[Dave A]

It really does sound like a floating neutral. The hope for now is that the problem is at the same location that has been causing your ongoing bad neutral / nuisance tripping issues.